NSA workers spied on lovers

Saturday

Sep 28, 2013 at 12:01 AMSep 28, 2013 at 11:08 AM

WASHINGTON - At least a dozen U.S. National Security Agency employees have been caught using secret government-surveillance tools to spy on the emails or phone calls of current or former spouses and lovers in the past decade, according to the intelligence agency's internal watchdog.

WASHINGTON — At least a dozen U.S. National Security Agency employees have been caught using secret government-surveillance tools to spy on the emails or phone calls of current or former spouses and lovers in the past decade, according to the intelligence agency’s internal watchdog.

The practice is known in intelligence-world shorthand as “LOVEINT” and was disclosed by the NSA office of the inspector general in response to a request by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican, Charles Grassley, for a report on abuses of the NSA’s surveillance authority.

In one instance in 2005, a military member of the NSA queried six email addresses of a former American girlfriend — on the first day he obtained access to the data-collection system. He later testified that “he wanted to practice on the system” and gained no information as a result of his queries.

In another instance, a foreign woman who was employed by the U.S. government suspected that her lover, an NSA civilian employee, was listening to her phone calls. She shared her suspicion with another government employee, who reported it.

An investigation found that the man abused NSA databases from 1998 to 2003 to snoop on nine phone numbers of foreign women and twice collected communications of an American, according to the report.

The NSA’s spying operations have come under intense scrutiny since disclosures this spring by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the U.S. government collects far more Internet and telephone data than previously known publicly.

Many members of Congress and administration officials staunchly defend the NSA surveillance programs as a critical defense tool against terrorist attacks, but privacy advocates say the spying agency’s authority has grown to be too sweeping.

Most of the abuses detailed in the NSA inspector general’s Sept. 11 letter to Grassley were discovered through the agency’s own audits, or self-reports and polygraph interviews with the employees.

Their names were not disclosed.

In at least six of the 12 instances reported by the inspector general since Jan. 1, 2003, the matters were referred to the Department of Justice.

In several instances, the violators resigned or retired from their jobs before being disciplined. Others were demoted, given extra days of duty, had their pay cut, and had their access revoked, the report said.